Hip-hop artist and Earth Guardians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez told Sanders’ town hall audience that gender equality, in the form of reproductive rights like abortion and contraception, is “one of the best ways to address our climate crisis”:

“This is the most important issue of our time because it connects every other issue.

“You know, if you care about gender equality, you know, some of the most recent studies, including [author] Paul Hawken in the “Drawdown,” was talking about how one of the best ways to address our climate crisis is to educate women and advocate for their reproductive rights.”

Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced “Shoe-Tez-Caht”) said that reproductive rights and climate change are directly connected because climate change is an “umbrella crisis”:

“That’s a direct line of intersection between these two movements, because climate change is that thing, is that umbrella crisis, that is more than we have ever successfully communicated it to be.”